


sugar, oh honey honey (five times Skye makes a batch of cookies, and one time she doesn't)

by notcaycepollard



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Baking, Comfort Food, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Jemma's major crush on Bobbi, fluff with secret feelings, skye is not very smooth tbh, the care and feeding of your superhero girlfriend
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-04
Updated: 2015-08-04
Packaged: 2018-04-12 22:43:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4497531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notcaycepollard/pseuds/notcaycepollard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Skye has a sweet tooth and a very particular comfort food.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sugar, oh honey honey (five times Skye makes a batch of cookies, and one time she doesn't)

The first time Skye learns to bake cookies, she's in what she'll later remember as her favourite foster home. Mrs S is nice, she thinks. She has warm eyes and long brown hair and her house always smells cosy and sweet. And she doesn't call Skye 'Mary-Sue', which she thinks is maybe the nicest thing about her.

 "Honey? Is that you, Susie-pie? How was school?" Mrs S calls. "I'm in the kitchen, you wanna tell me about it?"

Skye stomps into the kitchen, throwing her school bag on the floor. "School was  _fine_ ," she says, scowling in the way only a six-year-old can. Mrs S laughs.

"Well, I was thinking about doing some baking. That looks like a cookies face, what do you think?" Skye doesn't know. They don't have cookies at the orphanage. She shrugs.

"Okay, let's give it a go," her foster mom says. "Go wash up your hands, honey, and then I'll show you how to sieve the flour."

By the time they're finished, there's flour all over the floor, and in Skye's hair. She's got smudges of chocolate around her mouth where she'd not-so-secretly stolen the chocolate buttons out of the batter. But Mrs S hadn't yelled when she'd dropped an egg, her hands too buttery to crack it open like she'd showed her. And there's a tray of cookies looking perfect on the cooling rack, and another one in the oven, and the kitchen smells like something Skye didn't even know it could smell like.

"I got in a fight," she admits, in a small voice. She swings her feet under the chair she's perched at, looks down at the surface of the kitchen table, because she can feel her eyes filling up with tears, and it's not fair. Mrs S is going to send her back, for sure. "The girls in my class made fun of me. They said I didn't have a real family." She sniffs and bites her lip. "They're right, I guess."

"Oh sweetheart," Mrs S says, and gathers her up onto her own lap. "People are jerks, honey, and that's the truth, but you've got a real family right here, just you and me. How'd you fight back?"

"I hit 'em," Skye confesses, and instead of getting a scolding or spanking or being bundled right back to St Agnes, Mrs S just laughs and gives her a cookie and a big glass of milk. The milk is cold and creamy, and the cookie's still warm, and the milk chocolate buttons are softly melted. It's the best thing she's ever tasted.

When she does go back to St Agnes six months later, Mrs S tucks a packet of cookies into her backpack, with the recipe written out in big, careful printing, and her eyes are so red Skye wonders why she's sending her back at all. She must have done something wrong, she thinks, something really wrong, but she hides the cookies so she can eat them secretly in bed, at night. She never gets to bake the cookies from Mrs S's recipe, but she keeps it for years, until the paper is so thin it's falling apart, and when she loses it (along with everything else she'd managed to tote around) in her last foster house, she knows it by heart already.

 

***

 

Skye's not afraid to admit it; there are some things that really,  _really_ suck about living in a van, and one of them is that she doesn't exactly have access to an oven. She's really tired of living off illicitly microwaved Hot Pockets and crappy diner specials and dry cereal right out of the box.

She gets a camp stove, and that's great, because now she can make crappy mac and cheese, the store-brand shit out of a box, not even Kraft, but what she really misses are homemade cookies. They're her comfort food, okay, she's allowed, and she can't afford to spend three bucks on a fancy one from a bakery, but jeez, she misses them a lot.

One night she scores a bag of stale Starbucks cookies out of the dumpster, and then she has a really brilliant idea, because cookies are delicious any way you slice them but stale cookies are not exactly the greatest. She heats up a skillet, dumps in a couple of chocolate-chunk cookies, and leaves the lid on for five minutes, checking in to make sure they don't burn.

Her van smells like butter and vanilla, and the chocolate is sweetly melted, and Skye curls up in her sleeping bag, pulls up a podcast, and thinks, things are alright.

 

***

 

One of the small joys of staying in this motel is, she's learning all about Coulson's secret junk food habits. Last night he'd handed her half his chocolate bar, let her steal chips while he wasn't looking, so she thinks it's only fair, now, to share back.

"Whatcha doing?" he asks, settling down on the patio chair next to her, and she sighs in frustration, closing her laptop.

"Nothing much. Eating cookies, trying to hack into Garrett's mainframe. Succeeding more at one than the other."

"Cookies?" Coulson says hopefully, and she grins, slides the tub across the table. He makes a face.

"Skye, this isn't _cookies_ , you're eating refrigerated Tollhouse cookie dough straight out of the tub. With a  _spoon_." She shrugs, takes another mouthful, offers him the spoon, and after a beat, he accepts.

"The thing about cookie dough," she explains patiently, "is that it's kind of awful and you'll get real bad sugar burn but you can also eat a whole tub at a time." Coulson slides a thoughtful bite into his mouth, and Skye doesn't think about the fact that they're sharing a spoon, because, like, he's her  _boss_ , and also her friend, and down that road lies madness.

"This is disgusting and you're a monster," he says, at length, and eats another spoonful, gives her back the spoon. She bumps her shoulder against his, takes another bite, and savors the crunchy grit of sugar, the way it burns sweet in the back of her throat.

 

***

 

The team kind of knows about Skye's baking habits, by now, and every time they talk about chocolate chip cookies, Trip pipes up about the ones Mama Tripplet makes, the ones with caramel candies melted onto the top of each one while they're still hot from the oven.

She thinks maybe it'd be nice to bake something, for the team, help them settle into the Playground. And she's stolen a bag of Hershey's caramel kisses from Coulson's office, so it seems pretty obvious what she's going to make. The Playground oven takes a bit of getting used to, but for someone who used to bake over a camp stove, it's just fine. If she eats more kisses than she bakes with, well, no one needs to know.

When she brings out the tray of cookies, still warm and fragrant, everyone perks up in a way that's pretty cute, actually. Trip takes a bite, and his grin is the hugest she's ever seen. " _Da_ yum _,_ Skye! These are almost as good-"

"As the ones Mama Tripplet makes? Yeah, yeah, heard it all before," she laughs, and he shoves the rest of the cookie in his mouth, grabs another one off her plate. 

"Seriously! You've got a gift, girl," he says, playfully ruffling her hair. Even Hunter and Bobbi stop their bickering while their mouths are full of melted chocolate and caramel and buttery crumbs, and Skye thinks that's probably the best win she's going to get.

She goes to find Coulson, before all the cookies disappear, and he's in his office going over some papers. He gives her a look, as she offers him the plate, and she smiles innocently, raises her eyebrows.

"I'm missing a bag of candy, Agent," he says sternly, and she smiles wider.

"Sure, sir, I'll return those kisses any time you like," she says, and then freezes, realises what she's just said, flushes bright red. Coulson's in the middle of a mouthful, gives her another look, and she just has to walk away. _Smooth_ , she thinks. The only fix is to hole up in her bunk and eat her way through the rest of the batch and  _never think about it again._

 

***

 

It's really nice having Jemma back, Skye has to agree, even when she catches Skye in the kitchen pulling out flour and sugar and says, happy, "ooh, are you making biscuits? Can I help? I have some organic fair-trade chocolate, it's really quite nice when you bake it. My mum makes these lovely oat biscuits, with dark chocolate, and they're _so_ healthy and delicious."

Skye can't say no, really. "Sure," she agrees, and hands Jemma a spare apron.

The cookies - biscuits - that they make according to Jemma's mum's recipe don't really taste the way Skye is used to. The oats make them chewier, and the dark chocolate is bittersweet, not as melty. But dipped in a mug of hot sweet tea, Skye can understand why Jemma loves them.

"Jemma," Skye says sincerely, "I am really glad you're not a double-agent in Hydra anymore."

"Oh me  _too_ ," Jemma says earnestly, "it was so _stressful_! Honestly Skye, I don't know how anyone does it. Bobbi is _very impressive._ " Jemma looks wistful, a bit dreamy, as she eats another biscuit, and Skye has to hide a smile.

 

***

 

She's just completed her very first actually for real  _superhero solo mission_ , and she supposes she should feel proud, or something, but mostly she just feels  _hungry_. Apparently using her powers burns, like, a million calories a minute, and Simmons has made her an energy replacement rehydration formula full of protein powder and electrolytes and B-vitamins, but (she's not gonna lie) it's a bit gross. Super healthy, probably, but... a bit gross.

She flops into the couch in the Nest, groaning a bit, and wishes she was back at the Playground, because at least there she knows she's got a secret candy stash, but Caterpillar mission equals debriefs at the Caterpillar base because of the whole _top secret_ thing, so here she is. It's not so bad. A bit lonely - their recruitment's been pretty low, so far - but at least she always gets to pick for movie nights.

She hears Coulson's footsteps and pulls herself up to a roughly upright position.

"Hey," he greets her, companionably. "How'd it go? Feeling alright?"

"Coulson," she says seriously, "I am  _mortally wounded_ with how hungry I am right now."

"I thought that might be the case," he replies, and hands her a plate and a big glass of cold milk. On the plate are six golden, perfectly baked chocolate chip cookies. 

"Holy god, yes," she groans, and shoves an entire cookie into her mouth. They're the best thing she's ever eaten. "...ohmygod," she mumbles, through a mouthful of cookie. "These are- these are still  _warm_ , Coulson, did you just bake these?" Coulson smirks.

"Secret recipe and everything. The secret's in the chocolate, you've got to use chopped bittersweet chocolate instead of pre-bought chips," he says enthusiastically. She sighs with happiness.

"These are the  _best things I've ever eaten_ ," she tells him, sips her milk and takes another huge bite. "Is there, Jesus, is there  _sea salt_ on the top of these? Holy  _fuck_ , it's so good."

"Flaked Maldon salt," he agrees, sounding pleased. "Are you... I know they're not your recipe, but I'm glad you like them."

"Coulson," she says, swallowing her mouthful. "Coulson, they're perfect," and then she grabs him by the tie, drags him in for a kiss, because he's baked her cookies and waited up for her to get home and it turns out that this is everything she wants, right now, everything she's ever wanted, in a sweet, dreamy, butter-and-vanilla-tasting kiss.

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Coulson's cookies are based on my girlfriend's chocolate chip cookie recipe, which is out-of-sight good. The trick is in the melted butter and the flaky sea salt and also, like Coulson says, using chopped dark chocolate instead of pre-packaged chips. And never pre-flattening them before you bake them.
> 
>  
> 
> Did I name Skye's foster mom after Siobhan Sadler? YOU'RE DAMN RIGHT.


End file.
